Fortescue drops Federal Court legal blue over ex-employees’ green dreams

A long-running legal saga between Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue and three ex-employees who were accused of ripping off green technology has come to an abrupt end.

The three-year intellectual property stoush spectacularly included home raids, private investigators rummaging through trash and even nazi name-calling.

The Federal Court settlement was confirmed by Element Zero on Wednesday, with all claims made by Fortescue set to be dropped.

Consent orders by Justice Brigitte Markovic draw to an end a lengthy lawsuit against Bart Kolodziejczyk and Bjorn Winther-Jensen, who had had previously been accused of basing their start-up Element Zero around ionic iron processing technology developed while employed by Fortescue Future Industries.

“Pursuant to confidential terms of settlement, the Federal Court of Australia today made orders by consent dismissing the claims against Element Zero and its co-founders Mr Michael Masterman, Dr Bart Kolodziejczyk and Dr Bjorn Winther-Jensen,” a statement from Element Zero read.

“With no order as to costs and all previous costs orders vacated, the parties will meet their own expenses in relation to the action.”

Element Zero was founded by the former Fortescue scientists with the financial muscle of Mr Forrest’s former right hand man Michael Masterman.

Mr Masterman, now the CEO of Element Zero, said the company was “extremely pleased with the outcome”, which ended “nearly two years of uncertainty”.

“We are delighted to put this episode behind us,” he said.

“We can now focus all of our deep and capable technical resources on rapidly advancing our iron ore-to-iron technology and developing our manufacturing sites in the Pilbara heartland of Port Hedland and in the US.”

A Fortescue spokesman said: “We have reached a settlement with the parties, the terms of which are confidential. Given the confidentiality, we are unable to comment further.”

There has been no order made regarding costs of the lengthy litigation.

Fortescue had long claimed its former scientists stole the blueprints for mining processing technology powered by clean energy.

The iron ore giant plans to use flammable green hydrogen in the processing of its WA ore into high-grade iron ready for sale at premium prices.

Element Zero senior players have claimed its own process is not reliant on hydrogen, will be far easier to build on an industrial scale and can be used with a variety of metals.

The bitter court stoush included revelations Fortescue hired private investigators to spy on the families of the defendants, including following them to Kmart and sifting through their mail.

Fortescue then had specialist teams of lawyers raid Element Zero’s Malaga HQ plus the homes of Dr Winther-Jensen and Dr Kolodziejczyk.

In her orders published Wednesday, Justice Markovic ruled that any electronic copies of items seized during the search order were to be destroyed, and any hard copies returned to the parties’ respective lawyers.

The settlement comes nearly 18 months after Mr Forrest likened the creation of Element Zero to the nazis’ devastating exit from Poland in World War II.

“You’re not going to work on a whole heap of technology with a whole heap of other people, where the company’s taking a great deal of risk backing technology, which was not developed by people who left and then have them email all that technology to an entity which we’re not aware of,” Mr Forrest told The West Australian last July.

“Then worse, in a kind of Hitler-esque pulling out of Poland burn all the bridges as you go, deleting all that information … I mean that is just not on.

“I mean, we take risks. Everyone who works here takes a risk not to see that reward stolen, so we will prosecute that to the full extent of the law.”